Hotel: The Kahala Hotel & Resort (Oahu, Hawaii)
Room: Standard Room, Mountain View, Balcony
Early Check-in: Regular checkin time is 3:00 pm, were able to checkin at 2:30 pm.
Upgrade: Upgraded from no-Balcony to Balcony room.
Late Checkout: N/A (see below).
Breakfast Credit: $60 credit per day, which is not enough to cover the actual cost of a breakfast buffet, which is $49 per person. We were also lied to at check-in, where they promised that breakfast is "free", despite the Amex letter explicitly saying it is $60 credit (per room, not per person).
Amenity: $100 Credit. Applied to any room charges.
Comment: The hotel itself was alright. The swimming pool area is fairly tight, with lots of beach chairs crammed around the swimming pool. The breakfast was really good, with a nice buffet spread and fast and friendly service. The room was big, with an exceptionally big bathroom with separate his/hers vanities and opposite ends. Really nice.

Unfortunately the stay was completely destroyed after we realized that the hotel keeps a number of live dolphins in a tiny, shallow and dirty pond close to the pool area. The pond is ridiculously undersized for the animals, effectively the equivalent of a "goldfish in a bowl". During the day the dolphins are used to entertain the tourists and after hours they circle around this tiny compound where they can barely move - pure torture for sea creatures that are supposed to live in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. This operation is ran by Dolphin Quest (or Dolphin Torture, as we called them).

We were supposed to stay three nights but moved to another hotel after the first night. We let the management know we don't condone such treatment of animals. We received ridiculous "corp-speak" responses:

• The dolphin area is managed by Dolphin Quest, not by the hotel. (It is in the middle of the pool area, you literally can not go to the pool without walking a bridge that spans the pond. You have the power to get rid of it).
• The dolphins were born in captivity. (This is supposed to make it better? If your parents were born in a jail, do you belong in a jail, too?)
• We take care of the dolphins and we have an important educational mission. (If you took care of them you wouldn't keep them in a tiny pond. You should first educate yourself as to what the natural environment of a dolphin is).
• There are plans to remove the dolphins in the future. (No, there aren't any, you're just trying to shutdown an uncomfortable discussion to avoid further embarrassment).

For anyone still reading this, please do not stay at this hotel until they stop their blatant animal abuse. It is 2022, not 1952, we should have moved on from "hotel zoos" a long time ago.